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I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Leaning Forward

The new AFRICOM commander awaiting confirmation would like the authority to strike ISIL in Libya. The ISIL and jihadi problem in Africa is in more than Libya. But I have a suggestion for a tool that LTG Waldhauser would find useful.

Marine Lieutenant General Thomas Waldhauser told his Senate confirmation hearing that the U.S. military was making preparations for possible military strikes in Libya against the militants.

But Waldhauser noted limitations on the current commander's ability to order strikes against the group in Libya, which require adhering to White House guidance. That differs from the rules of engagement in Iraq or Syria.

Asked by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham whether it would be wise for Obama to give the commander of the Africa Command the authority to go after Islamic State targets in Africa "on your own," Waldhauser said: "It would be wise."

Libya has NATO bases in Italy nearby as well as transiting warships that can contribute to such strikes.

But the continent is big and jihadis are in more places than just coastal Libya or places within range of our Djibouti-based forces and CENTCOM assets in the Arabian Sea.

So the general will need the means to project power around the continent if he hopes to be able to strike such jihadi militants wherever they are.

The campaign against the main ISIL base in Sirte, which began in late May, has succeeded in getting to Sirte and taking most of it from ISIL and apparently killing or dispersing most of the ISIL defenders.

And note the presence of 100 American and British special forces to enable the campaign.

As I've been writing for the last 6 months, the ISIL gunmen don't seem to be loving death much these days. Sure, digging them out where they are in terrorist mode is hard. And destroying the ideology that spawns them will take time and effort.

But they don't seem up to holding territory in the face of determined opposition. I've noticed this in Iraq, and now Libya seems to suffer this problem.

So chasing scattered jihadis around Africa after their defeat in Libya could make the AFRICOM Queen modularized auxiliary cruiser more important to have.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!